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During Enoforum 2019, Giovanna Fia from the Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Forestry sciences and technologies (DAGRI), University of Florence, presented the project UVA PRETIOSA (www.uvapretiosa.eu).
The UVA PRETIOSA project aims to give a concrete help to the vine growing farms and wineries on how to deal with the reuse and the exploitation of by-products of grape-wine production chain following the principles of the circular economy.
It will study how to exploit the high adde-value compounds of the by-products and to use the final wastes to produce energy. The final residue will be used as nutrient in the vineyard.
The objective is to increase the economical and environmental sustainability of the wine making chain productive processes which produce important quantities of by-products and wastes, the most important due to the quantity and its economical and environmental impacts being pomace (20-30 % of the weight of the winemaking grape), the lees (5% of the total volume of wine which means 100.000hl in Tuscany) and grape seeds.
The project starts from concrete needs of wine making farms and wineries and wish to bring concrete solutions.
In Enoforum Giovanna Fia presented the use cas of the immature clusters coming from the thinning in the vineyard. In the Florence University laboratories, some immature clusters extracts were produced to use them to functionalize some food matrixes in order to increase both nutritional value and sensorial performance. The impact of phenols extracted from unripe grapes on the chemical and sensory characteristics of functional foods has been studied in detail using 3 food prototypes (vegetable purees based on potatoes, peas and beets).
The project “Uva Pretiosa” has received funding from the European Union’s through the Region Tuscany Rural Development Plan (activated measures (16.2, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3). and involves Beringer Blass Italia - Castello di Gabbiano, Isole e Olena, San Lorenzo Green Power, the Department of Agricultural, Food, Environmental and Forestry Sciences and Technologies (DAGRI) of the University of Florence, ERATA and VINIDEA.
Undermeasure 16.2 – European Partnership for Innovation – Funding for the creation of the Operative Group UVA PRETIOSA - Exploitation of by-products of grape-wine production chain
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